Untrustworthy Pirate Moonshine
by cupid-painted-blind
Summary: "You keep saying you're gonna get revenge on Rumplestiltskin. But how do you plan to do that?" —-Emma, Hook, late-night murder plots, and a legitimate and serious conversation utterly derailed by rum. Emma/Hook, of the UST variety.


**Title**: Untrustworthy Pirate Moonshine  
**Author**: andromeda3116/cupid-painted-blind  
**Rating**: T, for drunkenness, innuendo, a little cursing, and Captain Hook in general  
**Characters/Pairings**: Emma, Hook. Captain Swan, of the UST sort.  
**Summary**: "You keep saying you're gonna get revenge on Rumplestiltskin. But how do you plan to do that?" Emma, Hook, common ground, murder plots, and a legitimate and serious conversation _utterly_ derailed by rum.

**A/N**: I apologize for nothing.

Prompt from alandwithmagic on Fuck Yes, Emma and Hook on tumblr: _Emma and Hook brainstorm increasingly ridiculous ideas on how to get revenge on Rumplestiltskin._

.

.

.

When the conversation had started, it was serious.

That was before the tall jug of bootleg, possibly 130-proof ("Alcohol is _not_ an exact science, love.") rum came out of Hook's bag. Or, he _claimed_ it was rum, but Emma and rum had been very good friends once, and this didn't taste like anything she'd ever had before — but then, she'd never had Untrustworthy Pirate Moonshine before, so what did she know?

In spite of the horrified look her mother would have given her had she seen the two of them drinking together on a fallen log, it _was_ safe, for a certain definition of "safe." They were taking turns drinking from the same bottle, so if he was trying to drug or poison her he had missed _several_ crucial lessons on the art, and anyway, if that was his aim, she doubted he would ruin a small lake's worth of rum when there were so many other, less wasteful ways to commit murder.

In fact, that very sentiment had been the start of their conversation.

"You keep saying you're gonna get revenge on Rumplestiltskin," she'd said, sitting next to him on the downed tree, both because it made her nervous that he was that far away from the rest of them, and because she'd been on first watch for over three hours and she was bored. "But how do you plan to do that?"

It wasn't idle curiosity; when they'd struck their newest deal, she'd bargained with the inside information and whole-town access that came with her job as sheriff. It was simple: he would help them get home without Cora riding their coattails, and she would provide everything he needed to kill the man short of a key to Mr Gold's house. It wasn't a great deal and it didn't feel good to make, but they were desperate and options were limited, and hatred was a powerful enough emotion to make even the ultimate grudge-holder set aside their differences if it meant killing Rumplestiltskin.

"And a good evening to you too," he'd replied, frosty like he'd been since agreeing to join them. "Don't worry, darling, I've had plenty of time to come up with a few ideas."

"He's powerful," she'd started, and he'd given her this _are you_ fucking_ kidding me?_ look and started to say something that would probably have been terribly nasty and sarcastic, so she had gone on before he could. "In more ways than magic, more than even you know. I know you wanna humiliate him, but you'd better have a _damn_ good way to weaken him if you think you can pull _that_ off. I wanna hear it."

He hadn't responded for a while, just long enough for the silence to get awkward and for her to start wondering if maybe he _didn't_ actually have any plans, and then he'd leaned back against the torn stump their seat had come from. "Psychological torture's my favorite," he'd admitted, without remorse. "Get into his head, make him think he's going mad — make him look mad to everyone, mad and harmless and _spineless_ like he really is."

"And then kill him in private, so he's the only one who'll ever know the truth," she'd finished, and he'd shrugged an agreement. "But how? How are you gonna make him think he's going mad? I'm pretty sure he's already three-fourths of the way there."

"Well, then," he had answered, with a dark grin, "That will only make it easier push him over the edge."

"That probably isn't the safest way to kill an insanely powerful sorcerer."

"Do I look like I care about safety?"

That was, she'd had to admit, a pretty good point. "Okay, that probably isn't the safest way to _successfully_ kill an insanely powerful sorcerer. There's too many variables. I mean, if _anyone_ sees you at _any_ point before you kill him, the whole game is up."

"It also assumes you don't stab me in the back and rat me out to him," he'd accused, arms crossed. She'd laughed once, bitter and harsh enough to surprise him.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about _me_ saving him from you," she had replied too quickly and _entirely_ too honestly. "I said I'd help you and trust me, I _meant_ that."

After a long moment of scrutiny, he'd tilted his head and asked, "What's your grudge against him?"

Emma hadn't wanted to answer him, because the answer was locked up in a series of scars carved under her skin and she didn't even know _Snow_ well enough to tell her everything, so Hook was well out of the question. But she couldn't _not _answer, since she had all-but made him ask. She'd tried to start speaking several times before finally taking a deep breath and _demanding_ rather than asking, "You have any alcohol? I could _really_ use a drink right now."

It would occur to her later that most people would have commented on that reply, but Hook had just opened his bag and pulled out the rum without another word.

.

"No, no, I saw this once," she was saying fervently. "These guys tied themselves to the rafters or something somehow, by accident I think, and then they burst through the ceiling and shot all nine of their targets before they could react." Hook was laughing, and had been for the last two minutes, at her insistence that he should use the element of surprise to take down Rumplestiltskin, and that it should be as creative as possible.

They were two hours and each something like seven drinks in. Aurora had taken over the second watch, leaving Emma to (hypothetically) sleep, and, although she'd given them the side-eye, she hadn't commented on the situation. Emma had taken it as permission to drink herself into oblivion, a place Hook was apparently fully willing to follow her into.

"Shooting them?" he repeated, trying (and failing, because she was nowhere _near_ drunk enough to let him get his hand that close to her hips or her gun) to use her sidearm as an example. "With one of these? What do you expect me to do with _that?_"

"Oh, _please_," she sneered, brushing him off. "I know you know what guns are."

"I know what _real_ guns are, love, and they don't look like _that,"_ he replied, rolling his eyes. "I think you'd have better luck throwing it at your target."

"I can kill a man at 50 paces with this thing," she countered, which got his attention. "It's got fifteen rounds a magazine I can unload in less than a minute."

He paused, nodding slowly and appreciatively. "All right, I stand corrected. Where can I get one of those, except from your pants?" he asked, in a tone and with an expression that suggested he'd be taking it out of them when they were crumpled on the floor beside his bed. It raised her hackles, but — somewhat disturbingly — not unpleasantly.

She tried to laugh at him but it came out more nervous than mocking, which made him _smirk_ so smugly that Emma snatched the jug and took a deep swig to hide behind. It was the buzz that was making her footing so unsteady around him lately; she'd been drinking _way_ too fast on _way_ too empty a stomach, and she was really starting to feel it. "You are _never _touching this weapon."

"Still don't trust me, do you?" When she gave him her trademark _not amused_ look, he shook his head in mock-sadness and came in closer. "Don't worry, I'm not offended. I know what's going on here," he whispered conspiratorially.

"Oh?"

"Oh yes," he continued, taking the jug back from her, fingers lingering on hers for a second too long to be accidental. "You're in denial."

"You're the one who's in denial," she snapped back in her best disgusted voice — which was _damn_ good — and she was glad to hear that it sounded stone-cold honest. But Hook had apparently already made up his mind, judging by the smug, knowing look on his face as he leaned back away to rest against the tree stump.

"_Sure_ I am," he replied, with a tone that made her want to punch him and a wink and a grin that made her want to do several entirely different things.

She let her glare respond to that, but the grin _stayed_.

"Okay, so we're throwing out the "just shoot him" idea because you're not touching my gun," she said abruptly, waiting for him to get done with the rum so she could take it and drink until she completely forgot the entire past five minutes her life. "What else?"

He handed the jug off to her, which she made sure to take by the bowl rather than the handle where there was too much risk of touching him again. When she'd finished her turn to drink (which would have floored _literally_ anyone else, but when Hook had first handed her the jug and she'd tipped it back to down her first drink, he'd just smiled and said, "You might actually be able to keep up with me."), he was looking thoughtfully up into the trees. "We ruled out burying him alive earlier, didn't we?"

"Definitely, he'd just claw his way back out and kill everything," she answered, considering whether it would be a good idea or a terrible one to take another drink at the moment, and making the executive decision to set the jug down on the ground between them. She noticed that he made no move to pick it up.

Emma was beginning to suspect that they were both drunk off their asses.

"Damn," he muttered, bringing his hand up to his mouth in thought, which was probably calculated to draw her attention to it. She refused to give him the satisfaction. "And summoning anything, too."

"Transport him to another world," she offered, wishing that she had a tree stump to lean against because he looked so much more comfortable than she was. "There are a lot, I'm sure we can find one that's really humiliating."

"Yes, one where animals are the only ones who can talk and none of them speak human," he continued, sounding terribly interested in the suggestion. _She_ thought it was a great idea.

"You wanted to drive him insane, that'd do it. They say not being able to communicate will make you really crazy, really fast," she said and she didn't know why it came out somber. He didn't seem to find it odd.

"They?" he asked, but went on before she could try to come up with an explanation for who "they" were. "I could believe that," he mused. "Living with nothing but yourself and your past for company."

"That's _my_ definition of hell," she muttered.

"Mine as well," he replied slowly, like he was just now realizing it. He beat her to the jug to take the next drink after a short moment of silent, uncomfortable reflection. Suddenly, hazily, as he set the jug back down, he declared, "Get him _really _drunk and when he passes out, fill his bed with spiders."

She snorted. "Spiders?"

"I _hate_ spiders."

"No, I've got a better one," she said excitedly, sitting up a little straighter, "_scorpions_."

"No, those are too hard to get a hold of. Honestly, how many scorpions do you see a day?"

"How many spiders do _you_ see a day?"

"Too many."

"How many is too many?"

"_One._"

She burst out laughing, too drunk and _far_ too amused to care if the others heard — if Emma asked Aurora not to tell Mulan or Snow that she'd spent the whole night drinking and _flirting_ and drinking and laughing and _drinking_ with Hook, she wouldn't. "I can't — _spiders?_ That seems so — you're afraid of _spiders?_"

"I didn't say _afraid_," he countered, quickly, and it sounded almost like embarrassment, "I said _hate_. There's a difference."

"You don't jump on the table and hold your skirts up and scream like a little girl?" she asked, half-mocking, and still laughing.

"Oh, no, I do that all the time. It's terribly fun," he said off-hand, to, she suspected, keep her laughing. It worked. "I am being honest, though, they don't scare me, they just _disgust_ me."

"_Sure_ they do," she replied, matching his infuriating tone from before. He seemed less infuriated, more _approving_.

"What are you afraid of? Something you don't tell people," he challenged, drawing a knee up to rest his elbow on. The _creak _of leather was not lost on her.

"Babies," she answered immediately. He tilted his head, confused.

"Don't you _have_ one?"

"He was — I gave him up for adoption," she explained. "And I was _terrified_ when they put him in my arms because I kept thinking I was gonna _drop_ him and he would _break_." The conversation had suddenly fallen into dangerous ground, a place she didn't want to go right now. He still looked skeptical, so she turned the table onto him to re-level the mood. "You have any kids?"

As expected, it made him wince and look away uncomfortably. "I… _might_. Let's just say the, ah… the odds aren't in my favor."

"See, that's one way I have it better than you," she said, once she got her snickering under control. "We have this thing called birth control. It's reliable."

"Those things only work if you use them, darling," he countered, lightly accusing.

"I was seventeen when I got pregnant," she tried to declare defensively, but instead slurred indignantly. "How much did _you _think about repercussions when you were seventeen?"

(She was glad that he was also drunk, and wouldn't be able to mock her for the way she _butchered_ the pronunciation of "repercussions.")

"Fair enough," he conceded, and then asked, suggestively, "Are you saying it's something that often comes in handy in your life?"

She was really drunk.

That would be her excuse.

Because she _laughed_ when he said that, and dug herself a deeper hole. "Oh, you have _no_ idea," she started, and he raised an eyebrow, leaning forward to better pay attention to her; in the shadows and firelight and drunken fugue, his only clear features were his eyes, blue and impish and intrigued and challenging her to keep going. She smiled. "When I got out of prison, I left town, went to a bigger city. I went to the first dive bar I found and I said, really loud, so everyone could hear: 'I will have sex with the first person who offers to buy my drinks tonight.'"

He looked surprised for a second, both eyebrows flying up, and then _impressed_, and then he burst out laughing. "And how did _that_ turn out for you?"

"Not one of my best decisions," she answered honestly, with a shrug. "But it wasn't one of my worst, either."

He laughed for a long time at that, head down on his arm. She wasn't sure what sort it was, but it wasn't mocking or judging (not that he would have had any room to do either), at least. "I _like_ you," he croaked finally, voice strained and still not looking up. "You're my favorite."

If she had been sober, and thinking straight, she might have been offended to be Captain Hook's Official Favorite. But right now, she just felt too good in general, and her blood was too warm in her face and body, to pretend that they were nothing alike.

"So, we've decided then," she declared, steadily progressing through the happy phase into the passing-out phase, "alcohol and spiders will be his downfall, right?"

"And scorpions," he added, giving her a little half-bow, half-nod. "Can't ignore your input."

"I'm glad to be of service," she replied, and was dismayed to find that she had mimicked his accent. He paused for a moment, a little confused, and opened his mouth like he was going to say something witty, but she jumped in. "Okay, if I'm imitating other people's accents, it's time to go to bed."

"I can work with that," he said in an _it's about bloody time_ voice, with that same stupid infuriating and _sexy as hell_ smirk.

She was really drunk. That would be her excuse for the way she was thinking.

"I'm sure you could," she answered sardonically, and he stood up, only slightly steadier than she felt, hesitated like he was really offended by how drunk he was, and took her by the elbow to help her stand.

"Don't worry," he breathed, leaning in too, _too_ close, "I'm a gentleman, remember? And a gentleman _never_ takes advantage of a drunk woman." She planned to either argue the point that he was a gentleman or (embarrassingly) thank him, but then he went on. "Even if she is just _aching_ for me."

She elbowed him hard in the side and stalked off to her own bedroll, but couldn't come up with an honest-sounding denial. His low, smug, dark laughter followed her and rattled around in her head until she fell asleep.

.

Aurora's voice was distant, some kind excuse about _she said she couldn't sleep, I think she was having nightmares_, to explain why Emma was sitting on the downed log, head in hands, motionless and unresponsive.

It comforted her, when she finally had to stand and finish breaking camp, that Hook actually looked worse than she felt, or at least he looked much more disheveled than he usually did.

"Remind me," he said under his breath, gingerly packing his bag, "never to get into a drinking contest with you."

"_Likewise_."


End file.
